Purple Mountain or Zijin Shan (Chinese: 紫金山, Zĭjīnshān, lit. "Purple-Gold Mountain") is located on the eastern side of Nanjing in Jiangsu province, China. It is 447.1 m (1467 ft) high, with the lowest point 30 m (98 ft). Its peaks are often found enveloped in mysterious purple and golden clouds at dawn and dusk, hence its name.
A small mountain with an area about 20 square kilometres (4,900 acres), Purple Mountain is a mountain related to many historical events of both ancient and modern China. It was originally known as Bell Mountain ( 鍾山, 钟山, Zhōngshān) and also became known as Mount Jiang ( 蔣山, 蒋山, Jiǎngshān) after Sun Quan named Jiang Ziwen, an Eastern Han official whose spirit was said to haunt the site, as the mountain's god during the Three Kingdoms era.
More than 200 heritage and scenic tourist sites are now located in or around the mountain, among which include three national historical sites, nine provincial historical sites, and 33 prefectural historical sites. Located in or close to the hillside of Purple-Gold Mountain, there are also about a dozen national research institutes and universities.
Purple Mountain has 621 species of vascular plants, from 383 genera, 118 families (including 78 cultivated species).
Famous quotes containing the words purple mountain, purple and/or mountain:
“O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!”
—Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929)
“They turn’d to rest; and, each clasp’d by an arm,
Yielded to the deep twilight’s purple charm.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“He was a fool—a brilliant man and I loved his beard, and there was the mountain ax in his brain, and all the blood poured out, and he could not see the Mexican sun. Your people raised the ax, and the last blood of revolutionary mankind, his poor blood, ran into the carpet.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)